


The Tortoise And The Desert

by Merixcil



Category: 2NE1, Akdong Musician, Lee Hi (Musician), Winner (Band), YG Entertainment | YG Family, iKON (Kpop)
Genre: Alcohol Withdrawal, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, bladerunner au, non explicit suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4468952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jinwoo is a recovering alcoholic going through the standard Seoul rehab experience, the government mandated booze bot he's assigned is more than he had anticipated dealing with. (Bladerunner AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tortoise And The Desert

**Author's Note:**

> \- I have no personal experience with alcoholism, I have tried to handle the matter delicately and apologise in advance if I have been at all insensitive.  
> \- I'm really sorry about all the bad Bladerunner references tbh....  
> \- You don't need to have seen Bladerunner or have any knowledge of it for this to make sense

“Hello. My name is Jinwoo, and I am an alcoholic”

“Hi Jinwoo.”

An ocean of faces stare up at him, unrecognisable save for Seungyoon tucked away at the back. They are consistently blank, their eyes desperate. They’ve all been told that people like him are their best shot at kicking this sickness, as if what he had to say was any more meaningful than the last guy. 

Jinwoo takes a deep breath. This is harder than he was expecting.

“I don’t have much to say today. I just…I mean I…I think…”

“Just tell the truth,” says the chairman. He’s young, younger than Jinwoo perhaps, with the kind of face that makes you think no one taught him how to smile when he was a kid. 

The truth is a tricky thing, Jinwoo thinks. He’s been telling the truth for years but never enough of it and never at the right time. He doesn’t yet trust himself to tell the truth that they want to hear and he doesn’t trust them not to judge him for telling the wrong version of his story. There are conventions to these things, lines that everyone would prefer you didn’t cross; Seungyoon was kind enough to warn him of that much, but he skipped the specifics. 

Half-truths – singularly unhelpful. 

“I stopped drinking two weeks ago today, and I never want to drink again.”

He can see faces falling in the audience. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, they come here for answers, not confessions. It’s lucky for them that someone worked out that the two are so often one and the same but in the great Venn diagram of fact and philosophy that makes up Alcoholics Anonymous, there are bound to be stories that wind up outside the circle they thought they were stepping into. 

Face unchanging, the chairman nods in the direction of the next person to take the podium, “thank you Jinwoo.”

Jinwoo scuttles back to Seungyoon and has to stretch his neck to get a good view of the speaker; a woman with long blonde hair and impeccable make up who looks like she’s trying too hard not to force it. 

“We can split, if you want,” Seungyoon mumbles. 

Jinwoo spares him a glare to shut him up. There’s no point in doing this if it’s just lip service, if he’s got to be here he’s going to do it properly. 

He misses the woman’s introduction, but he catches the story. She had been to see an old friend out in the countryside, someone doing better for themselves than when she had been an important part of their life. Their oldest son is sixteen, an awful age to be, riddled with insecurity and susceptible to peer pressure; he had come home late one night, obviously drunk, and had thrown up noisily in the sink before passing out on the couch. Her friend said not to worry, but the woman says that she was shaken. She sees something of herself in that teenage boy, too inexperienced to know how deep the rabbit hole goes, and it scares her. 

Jinwoo can believe it. Though his view is blocked he can see the way her eyes fall uncertainly on the chairman when she mentions the bottle of imported whiskey her friend found under her son’s bed and wonders just how familiar that story is to some of the people in this room. And which side they were on. And how long it’s been since they were standing in that same set of shoes. 

They thank the woman for talking and she’s back in her seat before the next speaker makes it to the stand. The evening goes on like that, everyone’s got a story to tell. Jinwoo isn’t sure how listening is supposed to help, but it’s comforting to think that he’s not the only one. 

 

Seungyoon slurps his noodles about as obnoxiously as anyone Jinwoo’s ever known. Practically sticking his head in the bowl and letting the broth spill down his chin in his excitement. He eats too quickly, like someone might steal his food if he were to take his eye off it. If the food were bad Jinwoo would understand the urge to get it down before you can let it hit the back of your tongue, but Seunghoon’s cooking is fairly decent by Seoul standards. 

For the prices he charges, he’s a miracle worker. 

“More fish?” Seunghoon grins at Jinwoo over the racks of sauces he keeps handy on his truck.

Jinwoo returns the smile but declines. The ‘fish’ Seunghoon serves is little more than flavoured fungus with some extra protein additives thrown in on the side. It’s not bad per se, but when you know what the real thing tastes like the capital alternative is disappointing. 

Out on the islands, far far away from Seoul, real fish stray close enough to shore to be caught. There aren’t many of them, and everyone knows that if they ever want there to be more they have to avoid taking too many, but for high days and holidays someone can always be persuaded to dig through their shed for a fishing rod and haul something in. 

Real fish falls apart in flakes when you bake it, sizzling on the barbeque as the skin crisps – full of the ocean and full of flavour. Jinwoo loves those skins most of all, even if he has to pick his way through the scales to get there. 

Seungyoon sets down his bowl and reaches across Jinwoo for a napkin. “How often did they say you have to go to meetings?”

“Three times a week, until they can find a bot to check up on me.” Jinwoo bats Seungyoon’s hand away and hands him a paper towel. He sits back to watch as Seungyoon aims it at his face but fails to clean up any of his mess. Typical. 

“That’s a rough gig you’ve got,” Seunghoon says, smiling sympathetically, “how long before they find you a bot?”

Jinwoo shrugs, “who knows? Depends when the next shipment of down and outs gets sent back from Orion. And who knows how long that’s gonna take with all these new anti-replicant measures they’re enforcing”

Seunghoon frowns, “down and outs? I thought med bots were supposed to be top of the line?”

“Med bots? Sure. But booze bots,” Seungyoon shrugs, “they give you the cheapest bag of wires they can find and reprogram it to run every drop of alcohol out of your life. No one’s pumping more money than they have to into government sponsored aid.”

“Apparently I’m in for one hell of a year,” Jinwoo says into his noodles. 

Seungyoon snorts, “You got that right.”

 

The lift in his building works perfectly fine, which is a blessing, considering that Jinwoo lives on the forty sixth floor. He stares out from between the bars, feeling the carriage rock beneath him, trying to pretend it’s not a long way down if he falls.

The first time he came home after they kicked him out of the drunk tank, Jinwoo had stepped inside the lift and believed that it was going to let him fall through the floor. He had twisted his fingers between the railings of the cage, and by the following morning his knuckles were white and his shoulders cramped from the excess tension. Yunhyeong – the janitor - had found him when he came round to do the cleaning and Jinwoo never did find the words to express his gratitude properly. 

It’s the little acts of kindness that keep Jinwoo positive; the friends who don’t expect you to pay them back for coffee, the lovers who anticipate your cravings before they start, the half-strangers who lead you to your front door and let you cry on their shoulder and never say a word about it. There’s some good in everyone if you know where to look. 

The lock clicks and the front door swings open, Jinwoo steps into his apartment and blinks against the light scattering itself across his living room and glinting off the photo frames scattered around the walls. His building is right next to an office block, and at this time of day the late night workers are clearly visible – silhouettes against the workplace light fixtures. Jinwoo doesn’t mean to stare, but it’s hard not to. They all look so eager, so determined. 

And yet, Jinwoo never for a moment imagines they are happy. He can’t imagine that anyone in this chrome and concrete jungle could be, let alone a person having to work against their biological clock for the sake of next month’s rent. The sight of Seoul from the top of Namsan, laid out in all its neon glory, is undeniably romantic; but living amongst the skyscrapers is like dodging the footfalls of giants. 

But maybe that’s just him. Jinwoo hasn’t been happy for a long time, it’s easy to project that onto other people, misery loves company after all. 

For a moment, Jinwoo contemplates going to the kitchen to get himself a glass of wine. Then he remembers that the police came by and turned the house upside down in search of alcohol and every last drop went down the sink. He scratches absent mindedly at the chip in his wrist. They put it in badly and he can feel one of the edges jutting up to meet him if he presses hard enough. He has to show it every time he goes out to buy groceries, has to watch the unmoving face of the cashier when the ‘no alcohol’ sign flashes up on the till and try not to transpose an emotion onto it. 

Jinwoo spends a lot of time trying to remember that the universe isn’t out to get him and most people don’t care if he’s had a drink or not this morning. The post alcohol bust lifestyle is not the badge of dishonour they try to sell it as, it’s just a means of keeping tabs on people, and a way of life.

In the office block, a figure looks over at Jinwoo. They’re too far away to work out specifics, but he likes to think they’re smiling. They wave to each other and he hopes that they are at least smiling now. A small act of kindness from him to the rest of the world. 

Because small acts of kindness give him reason to get up in the morning and there’s some good in everyone. Half-truths at best, and nowhere near as comforting as he lets himself believe. 

 

Meetings are a blessing of sorts. Jinwoo finds speaking difficult and he still doesn’t know if he’s being at all helpful when he stands up and tells the room about the night he almost choked on his own vomit, or the first time Seungyoon tried to stage an intervention, but pushing it out into the open feels safer that burying it in his chest. 

“You’re Kim Jinwoo, right?” the chairman approaches him after the forth meeting, “I’ve been meaning to have a word with you.”

The wording is ominous and Jinwoo flinches instinctively. The chairman looks even younger up close, but his brow is firm and his mouth turns downwards, giving him a naturally severe expression. 

Clearly the chairman notices, “It’s nothing bad! I just wanted to make sure that you were settling in ok.

“I…um…I’m fine.” Jinwoo doesn’t know what else to say. He’s still not sure he’s playing the game that everyone else is expecting him to. 

“Kang Seungyoon isn’t putting you off?”

“I-“

“I know he thinks these meetings are a waste of time. I don’t want him to set the bar too low before you’ve had time to make up your own mind,” the chairman smiles, like he’s joking. It doesn’t look very sincere but Jinwoo appreciates the effort.

“He hasn’t put me off yet,” Jinwoo smiles back, and he means it.

“Good to hear. If he starts trying to persuade you to skip meetings, let me know,” the chairman hands over a business card with the name ‘Kim Hanbin’ printed neatly across the top and a phone number underneath, “and if you need help with anything else, I’m your first port of call.”

Jinwoo smiles a little wider and holds out a hand to shake, “thanks. I’ll be ok though, should be getting my bot any day now and after that I guess you won’t be seeing me for a while.”

“Maybe,” Hanbin shrugs and moves towards the coffee table, “bots don’t actually stop you coming to meetings, but they’re a little…”

“Intense?”

“I was gonna say creepy”

“Oh…”

Hanbin passes Jinwoo a cup of lukewarm instant coffee that’s nowhere near sweet enough, “don’t worry about it,” he says, “they help a lot. People like to talk as if they’re second hand lumps of shit that don’t really do much, but I guarantee you at least half the people in this room wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for their bot.”

Jinwoo nods enthusiastically, “I’m looking forward to it. Finding out which model I get, if it has a personality, ya know?”

“That’s the spirit,” Hanbin grins. 

From over his shoulder, Jinwoo sees Seungyoon standing by the exit signalling that they should go. He makes his excuses, and is sure that he’ll see Hanbin next time. 

 

The call comes three days later, when Jinwoo’s half way through his morning shift at the packing plant. He can feel his phone thrumming against his thigh from the pocket of his jeans but his hands are full of electronics and his vision is obscured by his goggles, so he doesn’t get the news until his next break. 

“My bot’s ready,” he says, barreling through the door to see his supervisor. 

Bom looks up from her computer and blinks at Jinwoo like she didn’t know the door to her office could open for anyone but her. Her nails are done up in acrylic – gaudy luxuries that have to be shipped in from China; the hot pink is the only splash of colour in the entire building and Jinwoo cannot help but stare at them in longing for a world that knows beauty beyond a neon skyline. 

He hands over his conformation letter and lets her scan the chip in his wrist. A message flashes up on the computer and Bom waves it away before Jinwoo can read it over her shoulder.   
“You’re expected back in 24 hours, and we’re docking a day’s pay from you either way so I wouldn’t bother coming back till this time tomorrow. We’ll move you down to the solitary cubicles then.”

Jinwoo thanks her, bows briefly, then tears out of the plant. He squints between the rows of workers shoveling smartphones and cables into cardboard boxes and manages to catch Sandara’s eye before he rounds the corner and the work floor is lost to him completely. She had wanted to come with him for this, Seungyoon hates the bot outlet and Seunghoon has to work during the day; but her shift won’t finish for another two hours and it’s more than her job’s worth to bail. 

It’s more than Jinwoo’s sobriety’s worth to wait; they are assigned on a first come first serve basis and he hears nothing but horror stories from people who showed up late and suffered through the incomplete care of a bot that lacked the computational sophistication to cope with the booze bot program. According to medical standards, bots like that should be sent to the incinerators, but there are only so many bots and a seemingly endless parade of people who need salvation from some substance or another. 

Sandara smiles like she isn’t disappointed and waves Jinwoo out. He waves her goodbye and tries not to think about the year he’s about to spend working alone. 

 

Jinwoo’s lasting impression of the bot depot is that it is a very noisy place. The boy manning the counter screeches out ticket numbers like the reception is not the size of a shoebox, people mutter and shout to be heard over the ever rising tide of other conversation and some of the noises the newly assigned bots make are piercing to say the least.

Wincing against the feedback pouring from a Robot Prince II as it greets its new owner, Jinwoo strains his ears to catch the next number as it’s called. 

“Forty four!” the boy screams. 

Not quite. Jinwoo checks his ticket for the hundredth time and is relieved when it still says ‘forty seven’. He hadn’t gotten here as quickly as he’d have liked, but when the next person to step through the doors gets assigned ‘ninety three’ he doesn’t feel so bad about it. 

The speakers crackle with the starting chords of the anthem that precedes every government mandated news report, another sound to complicate the mix. Jinwoo has to keep from rolling his eyes when it turns out to be yet another update on recent replicant activity in Seoul.

The door swings open and for a moment the smell of displaced alcohol drifting up from the delivery truck for the bar three doors down fills the room. It’s gone in an instant, but the root of temptation has already taken route at the back of Jinwoo’s tongue. He doesn’t flinch towards his ticket as number forty five is called, his eyes still fixed on the door and his nose straining to catch another whiff. 

The room is so crowded, the street so busy. Surely no one would notice if he slipped out for a moment and…

And Jinwoo doesn’t know. He has his chip to stop him buying alcohol, the cops won’t let a thief get far, but that doesn’t stop his mind wandering to the bottom of a bottle. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and tries to wash the smell out of him before his number is up.

Number forty six passes. Jinwoo’s fingers clench over his thigh. The same news report from earlier fights the discordant cacophony of the room. 

“That’s you isn’t it?”

Jinwoo’s eyes snap open and he peers around, searching for the speaker.

“You’re number forty seven, right?” 

The voice comes from Jinwoo’s left, a man with a pinched face and drooping eyebrows. He’s dressed head to toe in black, with clean shoes and well-groomed hair that make him look horribly out of place. This neighbourhood is as cheap as you can get, there’s no need for rich men to stop by to pick up third hand bots. 

Before Jinwoo can dwell on that particular inconsistency, the boy at the counter calls for number forty seven again and he lurches from his seat, desperate not to miss his chance.   
“Name and ID,” the boy snaps. Jinwoo throws down his passbook in answer to both.

The boy busies himself clicking through his computer and asks to see Jinwoo’s chip. The scanner down here has seen better days and it has to be pressed hard into his skin before it senses anything, hard enough that he feels the misplaced corner clicking against the plastic.

“We’ve got you a retired indoor maintenance bot from central Star Station in the Bellatrix system. It’s used to human contact, has a preprogramed personality and has been fully upgraded to include the latest in anti-alcoholic software. Do you take any issue with this?”

He stares down his nose, daring Jinwoo to speak up. Of course, if anyone ever does have an issue with their bot they have to go to the back of the line and take the next available unit, which is hardly likely to be better. Jinwoo nods and presses his thumb to the laser pad as conformation that he approves of the transaction. 

A door behind the reception desk opens, and a man steps through. He has a round, open face: grin wide and thick eyebrows curved happily over shining crescent moon eyes. He’s dressed in thick leather that bunches over his shoulders and slows his steps, like a motorcyclist that ordered too much fabric. He waddles forward and holds out a hand for Jinwoo to shake. 

“Hello, I’m Minho.”

Jinwoo takes the hand and has to suppress a yelp when he feels metal lying just below the skin. Minho isn’t a person, he’s a bot. 

“I…er...wow…nice to meet you”

“Here’s the instruction manual and recharge cables. This one’s pretty good at plugging itself in but if you ever get caught out the output’s at the back of his head just below the hairline. If you have any issues you can bring it back here,” the receptionist cuts in, pushing a thick pad of paper and a pair of bright red cables over the counter, “good luck.”

“Thanks,” Jinwoo beams

“Yeah, thanks Junhoe! I’ll miss you!” Minho raises an awkward arm and waves like he and the boy are friends. He receives and eye roll in return but the boy – Junhoe – is smiling.

Minho turns his attention to Jinwoo, “right then, let’s go.” He’s still smiling, wide and genuine and entirely too human for a machine. Jinwoo’s never been very good at telling the difference between real and artificial hair, but he’s certain that Minho’s skin is Nexus quality bioengineered; his entire face, in fact, is so perfectly put together that if he hadn’t felt the metal bones in his hand, Jinwoo would think Minho were human. 

What a strange piece of technology to wind up in the lower levels of Mapo, and with a personality to boot. Jinwoo supposes he should count himself lucky. He doesn’t miss the way that the rich man, still waiting his turn, stares at Minho as they pass and he’s not the only one. 

Jinwoo is reaching for the door before he remembers the delivery truck from earlier. His nose refills itself with the memory of stale beer almost instantly and he recoils, as if burned. 

Minho’s smile falters, “Is something wrong?”

“Ye-no I…I’ll be fine,” Jinwoo takes a deep breath and stands up straight, “it’s just…there’s a bar down the street.”

“I’ll stop you,”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what you’re here for.”

Jinwoo leaves the bot depot in a rush, with Minho’s flesh-and-metal hand clamped tight around his shoulder, and a terrible thirst tearing through his throat.

 

The second he opens the door, Minho barges past him and proceeds to turn the place upside down. Jinwoo had been warned about this, but he feels the warnings he was given weren’t nearly sufficient preparation for the destruction the bot wreaks. 

Minho breaks glasses, rips his duvet in half, tears photos from their frames, has to be held back from smashing the viewing screen. Jinwoo watches his home fall apart around him in dismay, wondering what on earth possessed anyone to think that this kind of fleecing would be necessary following the sweep the police had done on that first night. Once again, he’s stuck standing back, his privilege as home owner only stretching so far as to allow him to beg his supposed helper not to break his most prized possessions. 

Minho shuffles into the bathroom and Jinwoo hears the sound of something tearing. He folds himself up on the relatively unscathed couch, clutching a photo of his father down on the docks back home, and opens Minho’s instruction manual with shaking hands. 

He doesn’t understand it, or he’s not focusing properly, or both. He hears crashes and clanks coming from the next room and doesn’t look up, doesn’t flinch until the apartment stills and he looks up to see the bot standing over him.

“I didn’t find anything,” he says.

Jinwoo doesn’t reply, he doesn’t have anything to say. It’s going to take him the best part of the next year just to repair and replace the items Minho has damaged tonight. Part of him, a very large part, is convinced that he deserved this. This is what all substance abusers get, they pushed themselves too far and this is their punishment. He has no right to complain when everyone receives the same treatment; and besides, Minho’s just a bot, it’s not like he knows any better. 

But another part of him, small and squashed, is furious. Minho peers down at him with eyes that could be human if Jinwoo didn’t know better, and it feeds that spark of rage. He’s sure that something about this is inhuman and unjust but he can’t put his finger on it, so he pats the couch for Minho to sit next to him, and tries not to stare. 

Searching for the point where the skin ends and the metal begins.

 

Jinwoo learns that the skin on Minho’s hands doesn’t extend past his elbows the next day at work. They take a cab to the packing plant in almost complete silence, the bot staring out of the window in slack jawed wonder, like he’s never seen a city like Seoul before. 

Jinwoo has to remind himself that Minho probably hasn’t seen a city before, if he’s come in from the Bellatrix system it’s likely he was manufactured on one of the big bot factories out in the Orion network. Still, the look of genuine delight that crosses his face when they pass the Lotte skyscrapers, vanishing into the clouds, is out of place on a creature of artificial intelligence. 

Packing plant rules state that everyone must remove their coats and jackets before stepping into the work area. Jinwoo steps back and watches Minho wrestle with his zip, hands slow and lacking any real dexterity. His personality may have been well programmed, but whoever designed his motor controls did a pretty slapdash job. 

The jacket comes off and Jinwoo has to bite his tongue. The flesh that covers Minho’s hands makes it half way down his arm before it tapers off completely and all that is left are metal bones and wires where blood vessels should be. He’s an impressive piece of outdated engineering – his framework carefully sculpted to match the shape of the ulna and radius, titanium alloy tibia fresh out of Gray’s Anatomy. Where necessary, there are plasma strips in imitation of muscles that contract and relax as Minho shrugs off his jacket and passes it over to the cloakroom. 

Jinwoo can see why he would be encouraged to cover up, no one works so hard to create fake humans in bot design anymore. Humanoid, sure, but after the replicants went rogue no one wanted to see a replication of their own form. Playing God, they called it, He made us in his image but it was never our place to make anything in ours. It dates Minho, he must be a very old bot indeed, and Jinwoo supposes it’s something of a miracle that he’s still functioning.

The skin plunges away into a mess of circuitry below Minho’s collarbones, and when he turns to face Jinwoo he can see fibre optic nerves and a mechanical heart flickering with light across his chest. 

Minhoo grins sheepishly, “sorry, I know it’s ugly. I try to stay covered up.”

“It’s not ugly.” Jinwoo says, and he means it. Minho is a marvel, nothing less than, you’d be a fool to look at him and come to any other conclusion. But he’s eerie, and Jinwoo is suddenly very much relieved that he doesn’t have to parade him around on the main work floor.

Bom comes down from her office to lead them through to Jinwoo’s new work station. Her makeup is immaculate as always and today her nails are green, like the light through the chlorine fields over Antarctica, but all the makeup in the world isn’t enough to cover her look of horror when her eyes fall on Minho. 

“Where the hell did they find that _thing_?” she hisses as she drags Jinwoo into the elevator. 

“He was a service bot out near Bellatrix-“

“You keep him away from the rest of the workforce. The last thing I need is some half-baked replicant scaring everyone.”

She all but throws them into their solitary cell, and it’s only when the door clicks shut that Jinwoo allows himself to breathe, “sorry about-“

“It’s fine, I’m used to it. Used to freak people out on the space station all the time.” Minho’s still smiling, but it doesn’t look genuine, “c’mon, looks like we have a lot of work to do.”

Jinwoo looks around the room, and indeed the walls are stacked high with phones and computers and cables in various states of disassembly. So they have to fix this shit before it can be packed, wonderful. 

“You don’t have to do anything, this is my job, you’re not really supposed to help.”

“But I want to!” Minho straightens out a length of wire with an expression of great concentration, “I mean, I’m gonna be here all year. I’ll be bored to tears within the week if you don’t let me do something.”

“I thought bots didn’t get bored.”

“Only if we’re programmed to.”

Minho re-coils the wire slowly and neatly. Jinwoo remembers his hands over the zip of his jacket and decides that this is probably as fiddly a job as the bot can manage. He turns back to a pile of phones without microchips, and starts to hunt for something that can fill their backs. 

 

People say that bots are strange, that their speech patterns are too formulaic to seem natural, that what personality they may have is too set in stone to seem genuine. Jinwoo doesn’t know if Minho’s just spectacularly well made for such an old bot or if he’s too easily impressed, but he does know that either way he got himself a better deal than Seungyoon did. 

“Mine was an old refrigerator unit, they packed it off Ursa Minor when it stopped keeping vaccines cool. Useless lump of shit barely spoke a word all year and you go and get yourself something with a believable personality!”

“You’ll have to come over and meet him sometime,” Jinwoo grins at the screen, “he’s very smiley and optimistic, you’re gonna hate him.”

“Him?” Seungyoon raises an eyebrow, “bot so good you’ve forgotten it’s not human?”

Jinwoo splutters over his tongue until Minho saves him, demanding to know who he’s talking to. 

“Seungyoon, he’s a friend of mine. He says he wants to meet you.”

Minho’s eyes narrow, “how do you know him?”

“He’s an old friend of mine, he went through…um…well he…”

“I’m a fellow recovering wine-o!” Seungyoon shouts through the screen. 

Jinwoo winces and Minho’s eyebrows fly towards his hairline in shock, “I don’t think-“

“Sit down and take a look at him why don’t you?” Jinwoo says, shuffling over to make room for Minho next to him on the couch. 

As soon as Minho comes into view, Seungyoon’s jaw drops.

“That’s a bot?”

“Yhup.”

“Bullshit! Skin looks real from here”

“It’s very real, replicant quality artificial skin I’d say.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Minho mutters. He’s staring intently at the image of Seungyoon on the screen, brow furrowed in concentration, like he might be able to spot a fatal character flaw from here. 

Back in his thick leathers, Jinwoo reminds himself that it’s all too easy to mistake Minho for human at a distance. Seungyoon doesn’t have a handshake to work with, hasn’t experienced the unmistakeable press of metal against artificial flesh. 

“When did you get your bot?” Minho snaps, it’s the most threatening sound Jinwoo’s heard him make in the three days since they were paired up.

Seungyoon is obviously taken aback, “err…like three years ago now? Shit, didn’t realise it had been that long.”

“No slip ups since then?”

“I’d be pretty hard pressed to find a way to slip up, even if I wanted to,” Seungyoon lets out a bark of laughter when Minho’s face contorts into an expression of confusion, trying to unravel the precise implication of those words, “Jinwoo he’s astonishing!”

“Yes _he_ is,” Jinwoo says, and he thoroughly enjoys the outrage with which Seungyoon realises that he’s already using human pronouns for him. “If we can persuade him to let you come over some time I’ll let you take a look below the bonnet, he’s definitely a bot without the leather.”

Minho gets up and returns to the kitchen, intent on rechecking the apartment for smuggled alcohol. 

Seungyoon raises his eyebrows, “not that friendly then.”

“He’s nice, normally. I think it’s the extra programming they had to give him to be a booze bot, he’s not very good at dealing with people that aren’t me.”

“Well as long as he’s not murderous, I’m coming over to meet him in person as soon as possible.”

 

Two weeks in and Jinwoo has just about learned to live with and around Minho. The first weekend after the bot arrived he went through his apartment and diligently repaired everything that could be saved and binned everything that couldn’t. Minho had been profusely apologetic for the damage he had caused and made it quite clear that had he the money to pay Jinwoo back for any of it, he would be only too happy to chip in. 

Minho spends half an hour every evening checking the apartment for alcohol, even if Jinwoo doesn’t go anywhere. One evening he tried not to and almost had a panic attack. 

Well, that’s what it looked like at least. Nice skin or not Jinwoo knows he doesn’t have the right chemical pathways to induce a true panic attack, and after a good few hours spent trawling amateur bot maintenance sites he concludes that no one has yet programmed a bot to experience genuine panic. They’re machines, no one’s intentionally giving them traits that might hinder their productivity. 

Though just what productivity Minho has to be hindered Jinwoo isn’t sure. He watches him meticulously rewinding cables for eight hours a day at the packing plant with a single minded concentration that could never be afforded to a human, but he isn’t dextrous or overly intelligent or even that much stronger than Jinwoo. Sure, he can spit out calculations father than Jinwoo can blink, but for something with such a well thought out design, he seems remarkably useless. 

“What were you built for?” Jinwoo asks one morning, when the silence between them has stretched on long enough. 

Minho looks up from the mess of blue wires he’s attempting to untangle and blinks like he had never considered the question before. “What _was_ I built for?” 

His eyes lose focus and Jinwoo can only conclude that he doesn’t know or doesn’t remember. 

After five minutes, Minho is no closer to untangling the wires than when he started, so Jinwoo takes pity on him and drops onto the floor next to him to help out. 

Minho grins his signature sheepish grin and thanks Jinwoo for supplying his more nimble fingers. 

“S’no problem,” Jinwoo mumbles. Truthfully, he was sick of pushing new screens into broken computers. 

Minho watches him work, childish fascination painted across his face, eyes widening every time Jinwoo finds a new knot and unwinds it in the work of a moment. 

“There you go,” Jinwoo smiles, passing the wires back as separate entities. 

“Woah, thanks!” Minho beams, “you’re really good at this.”

“It’s just wires.”

“But you’re good at them!”

“Maybe.”

Jinwoo turns back to the computers and realises that he has run out of new screens. It’s a long walk down to the storage docks from here, or he could go back to clipping the backs onto phones. Either way he has six hours to kill before he can leave. Sighing, he digs his ID card out from his back pocket and makes for the door. 

“Do you miss them?”

Jinwoo turns to Minho, blinking cluelessly, “miss who?”

“Your friends, from upstairs.” He winds the blue wires carefully around his hands.

“Who said I had friends upstairs?”

“No one. But I don’t think you’ve worked down here forever.”

Slowly, Jinwoo slides the ID card back into his pocket, “there was this kid, Donghyuk, used to bring cookies into work with him. Proper homemade baking, no idea how he had the money for it. Anyway he moved on a while ago.”

“That’s it?”

“Well I mean there’s Sandara. She’s nice, but…” Jinwoo doesn’t like to think about the ‘but’ too hard. It lingers at the edge of every thought he has of Sandara, significant enough to warrant prominence but uncomfortable enough for him to never hand it over.”

Minho stares at him expectantly, “what?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“NO!” Jinwoo laughs despite himself, “goodness me, no. I mean, she’s great, and she’s pretty, but no.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Jinwoo twists his lips around words he’s not entirely sure how to give voice to. In the end, he has to speak staring at the floor, “we used to drink together. Every day after work. She knows about…well she knows what happened to me. But it never happened to her. I don’t think alcohol affects her like it affects me.”

When he looks up, Minho’s eyes have sharpened, his mouth fallen into a definite line, “does she understand what you’re going through?”

“Of course she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t need to. She…she’ll be fine.”

Jinwoo can smell follow up questions and indiscrete background checks following in the wake of this conversation, so he kills it before he can let himself blame too much of his burden on Sandara. She doesn’t deserve it, it’s not her fault she doesn’t understand. He leaves the room before Minho can finish winding up the blue wires, and by the time he returns the subject is as good as dropped. 

 

In time, the thick leather of Minho’s everyday wear becomes an eyesore across the wreck of Jinwoo’s apartment. Waking up every morning to find the same dark figure huddled in the corner loses its charm after the thirtieth day and human or not, Minho looks too real for his unchanging wardrobe to sit right with Jinwoo. 

“I don’t need clothes,” Minho grumbles as Jinwoo drags him through Myeondong, pushing him into whichever shops seem cheap and non-threatening. Still in his leather, he moves slowly and it’s an effort to force him between the crowds, but he continues on at Jinwoo’s behest; disposition decidedly stormy as it ever is when it becomes necessary for them to interact with other people. 

Minho tries on t shirts and sweatshirts, button downs and polo necks. The skin on Minho’s legs stops just above his knees, and so Jinwoo insists that he try on shorts as well as jeans. With his social contact so restricted by the presence of the bot, Jinwoo has no one to spend his little extra cash on or with, and so while they buy but a fraction of the mountain of garments that he forces upon him, Jinwoo is only too happy to treat Minho, regardless of whether he asked for it. 

“This is for me as much as you,” Jinwoo smiles as they cut through the main drag of the market on their way back to the subway (public transport is a rare treat under Minho’s care), “if I have to look at that big lump of leather for another day I’m going to scream.”

And no sooner have the words left Jinwoo’s mouth than a terrible, ear splitting shriek tears through the market, and with an alarming speed, the crowds up ahead turn tail and start towards them. Jinwoo tries to peer around them to see what’s caused the scare, but then Minho’s hand is in his, tugging him along urgently as the bot shuffles as fast as it can with the way of the crowds. 

“What’s going on?” Jinwoo shouts over the increasingly obstinate roar of people around them.

“I heard someone say it was a replicant strike,” Minho calls back, “come on, let’s get out of here.”

Minho pulls them down the first side street available, muttering about getting the bus back home. Jinwoo has questions fighting against his tongue but he doesn’t know how to phrase them. Replicants are rare in Seoul, especially north of the river, but scares are a common enough occurrence. If this is the real deal, he can only hope that no one got hurt.

Jinwoo sneaks a glance back over his shoulder, sees a body lying on the ground, and a familiar figure, dressed in black standing over it. 

When they get home, the news will be all over the screens and the airways. It’s confirmed as a replicant strike - a Nexus 6 flown in from Betelgeuse two months ago, but the rich man will be absent from the footage. 

 

“I still can’t believe that after all those replicant scares they finally caught one,” Seungyoon exclaims around a mouthful of rice cake, “a real life replicant! Right here in Seoul! At least the Bladerunners are finally doing their damn job.”

“We’re pretty lucky here, it’s awful in Tokyo apparently.”

“People dropping dead left right and centre because some idiot didn’t know how to keep a skin job off their ship, sounds like a nightmare. I guess we used to get a lot more of them when I was a kid, but I don’t know if that was a sign of the times or if it’s just a Busan thing.

Jinwoo shrugs, “I wouldn’t know, grew up in the middle of nowhere.”

Seungyoon hums over the weak coffee Minho had allowed them to make and glances towards the bot, “you know anything about this?”

“Nothing at all,” Minho stares Seungyoon down with an expression that is, if not openly hostile, approaching that territory. The initial aim of the afternoon had been for Seungyoon to get a good look at Jinwoo’s booze bot, but what with the events of the last twenty four hours, the presence of uncannily human technology in Jinwoo’s apartment is no longer the most interesting topic on anyone’s radar. 

“Stop sulking and come say hello!” Jinwoo demands, exasperated. 

Minho sniffs, “I’ve said hello,” but he still moves over from his position at the kitchen doorway to perch on the end of the couch. He and Seungyoon eye each other up carefully, eyes locked as they cycle through their own personal stages of mistrust. 

And of course, it’s Seungyoon who cracks first, “that’s not a fucking bot. You’ve got to be shitting me, that’s just some dude they’ve got to come hold your hand while you recover.” There’s laughter behind his incredulity and his eyes are wide in awe, but Jinwoo can see his shoulders tense all the same. Wary, as is his prerogative to be the day after a confirmed replicant strike. 

No longer wearing his leather, but decked out in long jeans and a turtleneck jumper that hides the tapering of his skin, Minho looks every inch the human. Everything from the quirk of his lips when he’s not sure if it’s appropriate to smile to the fingers tapping against the couch looks completely natural; and while he moves a little slowly Jinwoo reckons you’d have a hard time spotting that he was a bot if you didn’t know exactly what to look for. 

One way or another, he reasons, Seungyoon’s reaction is justified. 

“Shake hands and you’ll see,” Jinwoo smiles. And sure enough, when Seungyoon reaches out to take Minho’s wary hand, his face splits into astonished excitement when he feels the metal below the skin. 

“That…that’s amazing,” Seungyoon peers up at Minho like he’s seeing him for the first time, “you’re amazing.”

“Thanks?” Minho mumbles, gruff and bashful. He’s bad at taking compliments, and Jinwoo doesn’t know if that’s a bot thing or just a programming fault. 

The screen behind them flickers into life with yet another report of last night’s replicant retirement. Information about the specimen scatters across the image of the girl lying at the entrant to Myeongdong with a bullet in her head. She went by Lee Soohyun, she had the appearance of a young girl, she was a two year old Nexus Six. 

She was not alone when she travelled here. There are two more in the city, a Nexus Six and a Nexus Seven. 

Neither Seungyoon or Minho are paying much attention to the newscast, but Jinwoo sees the words ‘Nexus Seven’ flash across the bottom of the screen, and hopes that this time they’ve gotten it wrong. 

 

The skies darken over Seoul early that year, blocking out the sun before spring has really gotten started and leaving the city stranded in the perpetual night of high summer long before Jinwoo has mentally prepared himself for the exhaustive practice of living without light. 

The office block opposite his apartment is an eternal beacon of hustle and bustle, crowds accumulating around the coffee machines on the hour, every hour. Like a flood of over enthusiastic termites to royal jelly, Jinwoo watches them long past bedtime and halfway through the day whenever he doesn’t have work to keep his schedule tight. 

Minho passes the time Jinwoo spends asleep with his eyes glued to the building. He knows them all, if not by name then by their favourite shoes, or how they did their hair yesterday. As with everything, the enthusiasm of human endeavour fascinates him. 

“What do they do it for?” he asks one day, as Jinwoo pushes a mug of coffee into his hands (Minho can’t drink the coffee, but the act of joining in thrills him, and he seems to think he can smell it). 

And Jinwoo’s tired, dazed by the lights trying to grab his attention from the black. “Why does anyone do anything? They need the money.” He snaps, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Minho balks visibly and where his mouth had dropped open in wonder it closes.

Jinwoo closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts to three. 

“I’m sorry. The Dark’s always a tough time of year.”

Minho’s shoulders drop, “it’s ok.”

Minho is a bot, Jinwoo shouldn’t need to apologise to him. Minho shouldn’t even have the programming to have his feelings hurt. Minho still can’t remember why he was built.

They stare out in silence, Minho’s eyes flicking to each and every cubicle, Jinwoo failing to focus on anything. Dressed as he is in an overlarge and overworn night shirt of Jinwoo’s, the lights of Minho’s circuitry cast a dim glow in the direction of their reflections – white and blue. Jinwoo looks tired and his hair is a mess, Minho looks like a head and hands suspended above a great light. 

“I lost my job three years in a row during The Dark,” Jinwoo feels Minho turn to face him, he doesn’t need to look up to know his look of concern. 

“Why?”

“Because I was too drunk to leave my flat,” Jinwoo takes a large gulp of coffee before he can try to remember the taste of spirits and burns the back of his tongue, “not really sure how I afforded the booze to see me through the summer to be honest. I just sort of…started drinking when the skies turned dark, and by the time I was sober enough to handle myself the sun was up again.”

He looks up and sees Minho staring him with a mixture of sorrow and astonishment, “how did you survive?” the bot asks, voice quiet. 

Jinwoo shrugs, “you’d have to ask Seungyoon. He covered for me a lot.”

“What does ‘covered’ mean?”

“Not sure to be honest. I mean he must have made sure that I ate, he must have kept be sober for some of the time but I can’t remember it for the life of me. I dunno, he just made sure I was alive.”

“Why don’t you ask him about it?”

Jinwoo’s lips purse, “I’m not sure I care, and if I did, I reckon that particular trip down memory lane wouldn’t do me any good. I’m just grateful he did it at all.”

The sound of far off thunder pricks Minho’s ears. Jinwoo sees him tense up and moves towards him instinctively – not a grand gesture, just enough to close the gap. He rests his chin on the bot’s shoulder and watches steam rising from his coffee mug against the light of the office block, “can we go to a meeting tonight?”

Reflected in the mirror, Minho blinks in surprise. His brow furrows for a moment, then he nods. 

 

“Hello everyone, my name is Hayi, and I am an alcoholic.”

Like Hanbin, Hayi looks miserably young. Unlike Hanbin, she makes the effort to smile. Jinwoo finds it hard to really listen as she talks, but he’s happy he came. If nothing else, it’s good to be surrounded by people, even if he doesn’t feel like talking today. 

Hayi speaks of a hole she tried to fill with alcohol, a hole she’s still not sure is better used for anything else. She’s new, fresh to the sober world as Jinwoo had been when he first stepped into this room, though she’s far more eloquent than him. She smiles like she’s trying so hard to mean it and stares into the middle distance like positivity is an effort.

Jinwoo thinks that that’s as honest as anyone’s ever been within these four walls, and reminds himself that half-truths only hold out for so long. 

“Who’s your friend?” Hanbin nods in Minho’s direction, chewing his way through biscuits once the talking’s done. 

Jinwoo laughs and beckons Minho over to introduce them to each other, the bot characteristically straight backed and unwelcoming in the presence of others, “Kim Hanbin, meet Minho. He’s my bot.”

“What?” Hanbin’s shaking Minho’s hand before he remembers to double take, “shit, I thought he was real.”

“He _is_ real.” Jinwoo bites his tongue a moment too late. He’s become used to this interaction, all too used to it. He forgets that people aren’t talking about Minho’s physical presence so much as his lack of humanity. 

And that’s still approaching the problem from the wrong angle. Jinwoo has to stop pretending he doesn’t know what other people are expecting. 

Minho mumbles his way through an introduction as Hanbin eyes him up with bemused fascination. They drop each other’s hands rather quickly and before he knows what’s what, Jinwoo feels Minho tugging on his shirt sleeve, silently imploring him to leave. 

“So it’s going ok for you?” Hanbin asks. 

“Yeah it’s…”Minho tugs on his sleeve with particular ferocity and Jinwoo suddenly remembers that he’s in a room full of alcoholics with a long walk home past several liquor shops (he knows their names and which one stocks the cheapest spirits) facing him once he leaves. The meetings aren’t supposed to be temptations, but like it or not all the right ingredients are there. 

“I should go,” he smiles, and lets himself be dragged off. 

Hayi is sitting on the step outside the front door, her wallet open and a handful of photographs lying in her lap. She stares at them like they are her whole world. She isn’t smiling anymore. 

Jinwoo pauses as he passes her, “careful, someone will steal your wallet if you leave it out like that.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hayi doesn’t even look up, “it’s just money.”

Jinwoo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he lets Minho drag him onwards to the nearest bus station. 

“I’ve heard it helps,” the bot says, eyes firmly on the pavement in front of them. 

“What helps?”

“The photographs, they help them remember who they were supposed to be. But not why they were built.”

“What does that mean?”

Minho doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even seem to hear. 

The clouds above them have settled low over the city, imposing and claustrophobic and dark dark dark. The streetlamps strain against the muggy perma-night, shedding a thin orange glow on the civilian walkways but failing to make the world feel any more like the sun is shining. They take the bridge over the motorway to the bus stand and for a moment the high reaches of Gangnam are visible across the river, brilliant and blazing. Jinwoo hears that the very richest people in this city pay for apartments lit by bulbs so bright and so packed with Ultra Violet rays that for them it need never feel like the sun goes down, while in Mapo they struggle to keep their world well enough lit to scare away the fairy tale monsters. 

The Dark, replicants, the overwhelming desire to crawl inside a bottle and never come out. These are the monsters Seoul has been taught to fear, and the bright lights of Gangnam can only save you from one. 

 

These days, they talk while they work, which is nice. Minho is full of stories from the stars, the light of Bellatrix glinting off Diana as it rises through the asteroid belt (still thousands of miles away but close enough to be beautiful when viewed through the porthole of a space station); run down ships being sent up in flames while Apollo watches, the silence of space when he stood on the hull of the ship with nothing but an astro-suit between him and eternity. 

Jinwoo likes to tell him about life on an island half a lifetime from here, about natural greens and the sound of birds as the sun rises. A place so far from any city that the Dark barely touches it, and on the clearest nights you can still see the stars. 

And to think for all those years they were staring at the same thing. As a boy, Jinwoo would trace out Orion from the belt upwards, and he knew that Bellatrix was his shoulder. For Minho, Bellatrix had been the centre of the universe. 

“Did you drink before you came to Seoul?” 

Jinwoo still has the last of a smile left over from the story of the last time he saw his father come back from the boat, thinking of the photograph he saved from Minho's purge. He swallows it in an instant. 

“We drank the rice wine my grandmother made when it was ready, but I was never old enough to be allowed much. I didn’t get drunk until…well until I saw my first Dark I guess.”

There’s a story in that, and a problem for Minho to analyse and deconstruct. Minho likes talking about these things, he thinks it helps more than his preordained urge to rid Jinwoo’s immediate world of alcohol, and he’s right. But that doesn’t stop the shame coiling in Jinwoo’s gut every time it’s mentioned, he surprises himself every time with how easy it is to let his cravings seep back into his field of vision. 

The door to the cell slams open, “Kim Jinwoo, you’re needed up top.”

Bom stands in the doorway, hair dark red and nails painted gold – like she’s trying to make up for the sun all by herself. Minho glances at Jinwoo and doesn’t settle back into his work until he receives verbal confirmation that all will be well without him. 

Jinwoo follows Bom to the elevator and tries not to let himself be disappointed when no one stops it on the work floor. He hasn’t seen Sandara in months, and he doubts he’ll be able to explain anything to her until Minho is gone. 

Minho will be gone. Jinwoo knows this, and yet it is with a mighty falling of his stomach that he realises he has ever really thought about it before. The elevator rattles to a halt at the top floor and he’s still stuck on that concept as he follows the scarlet of Bom’s hair down the corridor and into her office. 

In this office, there is a man, dressed all in black with drooping eyebrows. Jinwoo sees him and freezes. “you-“

“Hello, Kim Jinwoo. My name is Nam Taehyun, I’m with the Bladerunners,” obligatory presentation of his badge, “I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

If he remembers Jinwoo, he doesn’t show it. Nam Taehyun raises his eyebrows at the dropped jaw he is greeted with, and waits for a response.

Bom clears her throat discreetly, Jinwoo catches up.

“I pretty much have to, they’ll fire me if I don’t.”

“Great!” Taehyun smiles, and it looks more convincing than Jinwoo would have thought possible, “we’re on the trail of a Nexus Six, female, around one metre sixty, appearance of a girl around eighteen years old. She was last spotted at an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter that you are tied to, so we were hoping you might be able to help us out.”

“It’s supposed to be anonymous,” Jinwoo says dumbly. As if the entirety of the sobriety program was not carefully managed by the government’s public health division. 

Taehyun frowns and carries on, “have you attended any meetings in the past two weeks?”

“Yeah, just the one though.”

“Just the one can be enough mister Kim. We don’t know exactly how smart this skinjob is, but last time we caught up with her, she was still going by her factory name – Lee Hayi. Now…”

Jinwoo stops listening right there. He feels numb, and terrified, and in awe. Hayi is just a normal girl, who talks about alcohol like she knew it as well as anyone and keeps pictures of her siblings in her wallet to remind herself of their faces on bad days. Everything she had done, from her expressions to the smile she was trying to force against the world, she had done with feeling – or at least that’s how Jinwoo remembers it. He can’t for the life of him imagine that she would be dangerous. 

“I know her,” he cuts across Taehyun, “go down to the chapter sometime and talk to Kim Hanbin, he’ll help you out.”

Taehyun closes his mouth very deliberately and an air of smug satisfaction washes over his countenance. 

“Thank you very much for your cooperation mister Kim.”

Jinwoo’s feet fall heavy on the way back to the elevator. Say the word ‘replicant’ and any resident of Seoul will hurry to do anything they can to make sure they never have to hear you say it again, a kneejerk reaction reinforced by years of public hysteria. But he can’t help feeling like he just did something awful. 

Why would Hayi hide in a place like that if she were trying to kill people? Why wouldn’t she have just killed them all then and there? Jinwoo grabs the wall of the elevator as it lurches down the shaft and feels sick, feels confused, feels compromised. 

“Are you ok?” Minho’s eyes are concerned when Jinwoo finds them amongst the mess of electronics at their work station. 

He takes a deep breath and gathers himself, “I’m fine.”

The disbelief in Minho’s eyes is as real as his reluctant acceptance, the skin around them folds and smooths as neatly as any pair of eyes he’s ever seen. And in that moment, Jinwoo knows. For a minute at least, before he can keep pretending that his world is simpler than that. 

Minho is a bot – half truths. They can save you. 

“We should get a cab back today,” Jinwoo announces half way through the afternoon, “it’s not safe out there.”

Minho nods in ascension as he winds yet another cable round his hands. Jinwoo has no idea how many that must be, but if he asked he’d get a definite answer. 

Outside, the skies are dark. 

 

Minho is lying on his bed when Jinwoo gets out of the shower, staring at the pictures of Jinwoo's mother and sister on the bedside table with his hands nearly crossed over the plasma muscles that he has covering the space where a person would have a belly. 

Jinwoo stands in the door, hair dripping water down his back, trying to think of a single reason in all the world that Minho would do something like that. Normally, at this time of night he’d be standing in the corner of the living room, plugged in and staring at his toes. 

“I wanted to know if it was nice,” and it appears Minho can read his mind. 

Jinwoo perches himself on the end of the mattress, “and?”

“It’s…I dunno. It’s not, not-nice?” Minho hoists himself up onto his elbows, “I don’t get why you spend so much time doing it though.”

Jinwoo tips back his head and laughs, revelling in the confused smile that crosses Minho’s face, “no one ever explained sleep to you?”

It takes a moment, but comprehension dawns on Minho’s face just as sure as the sun will rise after the Dark, “shit! I forgot,”

“It’s ok!” Jinwoo beams, “it’s fine. You can stay if you like.”

“For how long?”

“As long as you like. I’m a light sleeper anyway, just try not to run out of charge before morning.”

Minho nods, “yeah, they told me that you might have trouble sleeping.”

“Ahh it’s not so bad,” Jinwoo turns his back, saying no more on the subject. He changes into an old pair of boxer shorts – more than enough for a warm summer night – and slips beneath the top cover of the bed. 

Minho crawls in after him, the metal of his spine warm from the rumblings of his electronic interior, but not warmer than Jinwoo’s skin. They lie back to back, Jinwoo setting his alarm before hitting the switch next to his bed and plunging them into darkness. 

Or at least it should be darkness. Minho’s circuits never power off completely unless he runs out of battery and the lights from his heart are bright enough to shine through the glorified sheet that they’re wrapped in. More intense than the streetlamps, not even half as bright as Bellatrix through the clouds in winter; it’s nice to think that the Dark can’t touch them completely. 

Minho stays for an hour, then shuffles through to plug himself in for the night. A failed experiment perhaps – he cannot sleep – but when he forgets to close the door on his way out Jinwoo doesn’t mind the light cutting through the crack. 

 

It takes another two weeks’ sitting in on video calls, but Minho learns to trust Seungyoon not to take Jinwoo out drinking at the drop of a hat. Well, perhaps ‘trust’ is too strong a word, but when Jinwoo suggests that they go out to eat together, Minho doesn’t object. 

“Hey there! Wasn’t expecting to see you for another eight months,” Seunghoon grins over the top of a wok filled with something frying vigorously, “who’s your friend?”

“This is Minho, he’s my bot,” Jinwoo laughs as Minho’s back goes very straight.

“Bot?” Seunghoon blinks, leaning forward to get a better look at Minho. 

“I know, trust me though, that’s a bot,” Seungyoon collapses into a chair at the front of the cart and motions for Jinwoo and Minho to follow him.

Seunghoon sticks his nose back in his wok, sneaking furtive glances at the three of them like he expects someone to announce that they’re joking any second. “And will this _bot_ be eating with you?”

“I can’t, got no stomach,” Minho grumbles. 

Seunghoon throws vegetables and the protein infused fungus that passes for meat together with ease, and not five minutes later, Jinwoo and Seungyoon have bowls of noodles as big as their heads sitting in front of them. The Dark gives the impression of perpetual night, but Jinwoo knows from the clock behind the counter that it’s after midnight anyway – Seungyoon works late when he can, and finding an appetite is hard when you have no temporal cues to aid you. Steam rises through the warm night air, chasing the few insects that still dare to brave the city up towards the lights at the edge of the cart. 

They eat, Minho’s eyes fix on something behind Seunghoon and stay there. 

The chef notices of course, “something caught your eye?”

“You serve soju,” Minho snaps. 

Seunghoon blinks in confusion, “of course I do, that a problem?”

“Jinwoo’s not supposed to drink.”

“And neither am I,” Seungyoon counters, “don’t worry, it’s more than his business is worth to serve to us. The police would be down here in a shot.”

Speak of the devil, no sooner has Seungyoon mentioned the police than the lights of a black Bladerunner cruiser light up what little of the street has not already succumbed to the forces of neon. They sit in silence as the vehicle rumbles down the road, all eyes fixed on the tinted windows as it passes.

“No replicants down this way! Get out of Mapo and do your damn jobs,” Seunghoon shouts after them. Like all small business owners north of the river, he’s sick of having his customers scared off by the prospect of replicants in their area. Of course, the local police offices rattle off the same lines about preventative measures whenever pressed about it, the same old bullshit about how the presence of Bladerunners doesn’t mean the presence of the things they’re sent out to catch, but no one buys that anymore. 

Jinwoo almost points out that the last replicant incident was mere months ago and that Myeongdong isn’t far from here, but he sees Seunghoon’s bitter expression and thinks better of it. 

The car comes to a stop just out of sight. They hear doors slamming and people shouting at each other, though it’s hard to tell if it’s on the job formalities driving up the volume of their voices, or nerves. 

“Maybe we should go…” Seungyoon murmurs.

“Absolutely not,” Seunghoon snaps, “I refuse to rearrange my day to accommodate a couple of nervy Bladerunners.”

“I’m just saying-“

“Kang Seungyoon you stay in your seat and you finish your noodles.”

Jinwoo is about to turn around and continue with his own food when a movement at the top of the road, from the direction the Bladerunners had come from, catches his eye. Something moving through the few patches of shadow left, ducking into alleys, head down and trying not to be seen. 

It’s a girl, short, with hair past her shoulders, clutching something to her chest. She barrels past closed shops and open bars with a single minded determination, hard heels of her shoes clattering along the pavement. She steps into a patch of light and Jinwoo sees her neat nose, her wide eyes, and he recognises her. 

“Hayi!” he screams, but if she hears him she doesn’t show it. 

A second later, a gun goes off, and the street erupts into activity. 

First there is a bang, loud and clean with nowhere to echo in these low buildings; then Seunghoon’s reaching over the counter, tugging at Jinwoo’s collar and urging him to move. Ears still ringing from the gunshot, Jinwoo can’t hear him shout, but from the frantic hand gestures he’s supplied with, he gets the message.

Grabbing Minho’s arm, Jinwoo follows Seungyoon round the back of the van and pushes himself flat against the metal wall. The structure rocks as Seunghoon packs up in a hurry, hard enough for him to convince himself that the shaking of his hands is not fear and shock. The shadows falling either side of the cart become messy and confused as people leave the restaurants and drinking holes they had been clamped up in, and as Jinwoo’s hearing begins to return he can hear the stunned silence falling over people as they realise what has happened.   
“You knew her? What the fuck, why did you know her?” Seungyoon screams at him, and Jinwoo has to fight the urge not to slap him just to shut him up. 

The van stops shaking and Seunghoon sticks his head round the back, “c’mon, let’s go.”

They sneak away through a back street, Seungyoon swearing profusely all the way. Jinwoo catches a glimpse of the scene all the same, the body of a girl, surrounded by photographs spilling from an open book she had been clutching to her chest as she walks, and Nam Taehyun standing over her. 

Taehyun turns, his eyes lock with Jinwoo’s, and he smiles. 

 

Seungyoon’s flat is barely big enough for the four of them to sit in a circle. His bedroom doubles as a living room and kitchen, making the bathroom the only place he has to run to, and Jinwoo wonders that he doesn’t go stir crazy cooped up in here. 

Seunghoon mutters about replicants and Bladerunners and everything that’s wrong with modern society as he’s handed a mug of tea. Seungyoon joins in as best he can, punctuating particularly biting statements with as potent a profanity as he can manage. 

Minho is quiet, strangely so. His spine begins to curve and he sinks into himself, wobbling for a moment before leaning over to rest his head on Jinwoo’s shoulder. 

“You alright?” Jinwoo asks, prodding him in the side.

No response. Slightly alarmed, Jinwoo looks down to see that Minho’s eyes have closed and his body gone limp, as if he were asleep. 

Only Minho can’t sleep. 

“Is he low on power?” Seungyoon asks, stopping Seunghoon midway through a particularly vicious tirade on the injustice of funnelling public money into a highly advanced and mostly useless police division. 

Jinwoo nods, cursing internally, “I only caught a few hours’ sleep last night and he’d normally be plugged in by now, he must have been running low all day. Fuck, I didn’t even think.”

“No worries,” Seungyoon gets up and goes over to a kitchen cupboard filled with cleaning supplies, “I’m pretty sure I’ve still got my cables in here from when I had my bot. These things are standard issue, they should work for him…gotcha!”

Seungyoon steps back, holding up a thick red cable in triumph. He steps over to Minho and starts searching for the socket to plug it into. 

“At the back of his neck, around the hairline,” Jinwoo says, propping Minho up and feeling for the spot, “just there.”

Seungyoon leans down, pushing Minho’s head forward till it rests on his chest. At this angle, Jinwoo can see the metal socket clearly, hidden amongst the skin on Minho’s neck. It looks strange and unnatural, nestled amongst organic matter, even if he does know what lies lower down the bot’s back. 

“What the fuck?” Seungyoon drops the cable and abruptly steps away from Minho, eyes wide. 

Jinwoo frowns, “what’s wrong? Did you get a shock?”

“I’ll say. You ever take a look at the brand name on this thing?”

Confused, Jinwoo pushes Minho’s hair back and moves him round into the light to get a better look. Sat on the bed, Seunghoon looks from Seungyoon to the bot and back again like either one of them might explode at any moment. 

Minho’s brand is written in neat letters above his power socket, small enough that no one would notice them if they weren’t looking. Jinwoo reads it out dully, failing to process what the word means until Seunghoon lets out a high pitched whine and drops his mug, covering the floor with shards of pottery. 

“What the fuck is that doing here?”

“Seunghoon-“

“Jinwoo why didn’t you look at the damn thing before?”

Jinwoo has no idea. He only knows that his blood feels like it’s cooling in his veins and he wants nothing more than to not know this.

Seungyoon takes a long, shuddering breath, “I need it out of here, right now.”

“Ok,” Jinwoo nods. A very large part of him wants to stay and argue that there’s no reason for this to change anything, that everything’s been fine up till now, but the part of him that gets to act knows that would be futile. He slings one of Minho’s arms over his shoulder and hoists him into a standing position – he’s heavy, but not as heavy as he looks – and drags him to the door. “Seungyoon, I-“

“Don’t come back here till you’ve gotten rid of it.” Seungyoon’s eyes are hard and cold. Seunghoon looks like he might collapse right there. 

The door closes behind them and Minho’s head lolls forward once again. Jinwoo pauses to rearrange him before they move on, tipping back his head till the metal at the base of his skull is no longer visible, and he can try to pretend that the words “Nexus One” are not written next to Minho’s serial number. 

 

He doesn’t bother turning on the lights when he gets home. The glare from the office block is bright enough for now, lighting up the photo frames on the mantlepiece like his own private constellation, and the space is small enough and familiar enough that his hands will find the way even if he can’t see it. The cables Minho uses to charge himself are still plugged in, so once the bot has been deposited on the couch, it’s the work of a moment to pull them over and plug them into the socket at the back of his neck. 

The cables hit home, a dull blue glow pulses through Minho’s shirt. Jinwoo supposes this will take a while. 

In the kitchen, Jinwoo throws instant coffee and milk powder together as hurriedly as he can. He scrambles for mugs as the kettle boils and almost drops one on his head, only then does he think to turn the light on. 

He walks back through to the living room with two cups of coffee, scalding against his knuckles. He sets them down on the floor and allows himself to become entranced by the swirl of lights in Minho’s belly as they flicker back to life. 

Jinwoo’s not sure how long it takes, but eventually Minho’s eyes open, blinking groggily around the room like he doesn’t recognise it. 

“I thought we were at Seungyoon’s” he drawls.

Jinwoo nods, “we were. Then we left.”

“Is everything ok?”

Jinwoo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he passes Minho his mug off coffee (still lukewarm) and says nothing. 

The silence is incomplete, punctuated by the sounds of cars outside and the elevator rattling through the building out in the corridor. Jinwoo thinks of Yunhyeong and tries to remember when the last time was they saw each other. 

Next to him, Minho holds the coffee to his mouth like he might take a sip at any moment, breathing deep through his nose to catch the steam. He’s still sluggish and his inner workings have yet to light up completely, but his grip is firm. 

“Can you smell it?” Jinwoo asks for the hundredth time. 

Minho hums, “I think I can.”

“You think you can, or you can?”

“I can smell it.” Minho says, very quietly. Jinwoo doesn’t know why he didn’t say as much in the first place. 

“After you powered down at Seungyoon’s, he tried to charge you up with some old cables. But he couldn’t,” Jinwoo stares at Minho, “do you know why?”

“No idea.”

“He saw your brand.”

“Oh? Was there something wrong with it?”

“You’re a Nexus One”

Minho’s head snaps up, his eyes wide in the dark and expression stony, “you’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“If I was a…if I was a Nexus I would know.”

Jinwoo has to agree with him there, or at least, he agrees that Minho _should_ know. The whole reason the Nexus series is so dangerous is because they know that they are Other. He holds Minho’s gaze helplessly, wondering how on earth he doesn’t know what he is. 

“I’m sorry,” Jinwoo whispers.

This time, when emotion breaks over Minho’s face, Jinwoo doesn’t stop to wonder at the realism of it. Where there is a brain and flesh, emotion isn’t far behind. The way his mouth falls open, aghast, the way his eyes suck in light like a chasm has opened up within him, this time Jinwoo knows Minho’s programming doesn’t stretch that far. 

Something that sounds like a sob escapes Minho’s mouth, “so I’m a replicant.”

Jinwoo nods. He has no idea how something so simple evaded the people who brought him back from Bellatrix. Out among the stars, the Nexus are legal, but any craft coming to Earth must be thoroughly searched to ensure the offworlders never make it back. With his metal bones and electronic heart on full display, maybe they simply never thought to look any deeper. Maybe it’s just a glitch in the system.

“I have to leave, don’t I?”

Jinwoo reaches over and pulls one of Minho’s hands into this, “yeah, I think so.”

“Can I have five more minutes?” Minho’s eyes flick around the room, like he’s drinking it in, like he doesn’t want to forget what it looks like in the dark. 

“Sure you can.” Jinwoo squeezes his hand, and Minho squeezes back. 

"You have a lot of photographs," Minho whispers.

Jinwoo doesn't say a word, just stares into his coffee cup and drinks deep. 

 

They decide to do it on the roof, with all of Seoul spread out below them. All the Earth that Minho has ever known. The elevator ride to the top floor is treacherous, the cage rattling around them and threatening to drop them into the abyss right then and there. Jinwoo remembers holding onto the bars like the ground could swallow him up and wonders how he keeps his cool with two hundred floors between him and the lobby. 

The door to the roof is open to all residents but Jinwoo’s never taken advantage of it before. The moment that they step through it he feels his breath slip away from him and he vows to do better on that count. Under the Dark, the city burns bright before them, the screaming neon of company advertisements, the distant fires from factories on the edge of the city pulsating through the night. 

Myeongdong is a beacon to the east, garish and colourful and defiantly, wonderfully bright. Jinwoo doesn’t squint to pick out specific brands amongst the clutter, just lets his eyes glaze over as the distant lights blur into a single entity. A flash of green erupts from somewhere in the centre of the market and he is reminded of Bom, daring the Dark to take her sun. 

Next to him, Minho looks up. Their fingers are still interlocked, the metal of Minho’s bones hard beneath Jinwoo’s skin. He has to wonder if human bones feel this strange to replicants, or if they were designed not to notice the gulf between them and their creators. 

Jinwoo remembers Hayi, smiling like she could make herself believe she was happy and hoarding her family photos where her money should be. He wonders if the space between himself and Minho has not been greatly exaggerated. 

“I would have liked to have seen it, one last time ya know?” Minho smiles sadly, eyes still trained on the clouds above their head. Jinwoo leans into him, trying to see what he sees, and is of the opinion that if there were any justice in the world the skies would split and underneath all that doom and gloom the stars would shine out across Seoul to join the throng of lights. 

Not possible, he knows. Even on clear nights, neon drowns out red giants. It’s a crying shame, but it doesn’t hurt to wish. Minho spent most of his life – however much of it he had been given – circulating a ball of burning gas billions of miles away, there’s no harm in wanting to take one last look. 

“I’ll miss you, I promise.”

Minho’s fingers tighten over his, “you don’t have to.”

“I know, but I will.”

The office block is two stories taller than Jinwoo’s building, but as they peer over the edge, the two of them can see that the lights don’t extend any further than the fiftieth floor. From where they stand, the building looks dark and lifeless, a black blot on a shining horizon. Minho’s face falls a little further with every moment he stares at it, “they were always so alive.”

“They still are, just not up here,” Jinwoo says, “you have to remember that the empty floors are only half the story.”

“Half the truth.”

“Exactly.”

There’s nothing more Jinwoo can think to say. His hand grips ever tighter around Minho’s like strength alone can withhold the inevitable.

“Well then, I guess I should go.”

Minho takes the final step to edge of the rooftop, nowhere to go but down. His hand loosens in Jinwoo’s, but Jinwoo doesn’t let go. This is so unfair, so unnecessary, “you didn’t get to live,” he chokes out. 

“Who does?” Minho shrugs. He peels Jinwoo’s hand off his, then takes his head in both hands and kisses him. Just once, dry and warm, and the lips that press against his feel as real as anything to Jinwoo. 

By the time he opens his eyes, Minho is gone. 

 

It’s only on the way down that Jinwoo starts to wonder if Minho had felt pain, if he had been scared. Not that it matters anymore, but they feel like questions he should have asked. 

He gets to his floor, but he doesn’t get off. Glancing down the corridor, Jinwoo sees Nam Taehyun standing outside his apartment – face passive and a hand on his gun. For the briefest moment, their eyes lock, and Taehyun is shrewd and calculating in a way that sets Jinwoo’s nerves on the edge of a knife. 

Taehyun has the face of a man who knows everything, a man who knows too much.

The moment passes, the cage rumbles on. Jinwoo knows with dull certainty that Taehyun will follow him as soon as he can. Because Jinwoo was in Myeongdong that night, and Jinwoo knew Hayi, and Jinwoo hid Minho without even realising it. 

Jinwoo doesn’t know how he came to sit at the centre of a problem like that, but he knows it can’t be coincidence. He flees the building as fast as he might, running short on breath before he reaches the end of the second block. It’s only then that he realises it’s raining, acidic and putrid, stinging his skin where it lands and desperately trying to burn out his eyes. 

His tears are lost in the rain, like moments slipping back into time. In the morning, the sun will rise over Seoul for the first time in months, and Taehyun will waltz into Mapo Police Station to announce that the replicant threat has been dealt with.


End file.
